Geert Wilders

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Religion of Peace

Archive for December, 2009

The Byzantine icon above is the work of the 16th-century iconographer Theophanes the Cretan. There are many things that are un-Islamic about it:

1. It is an image of human beings, which violates the traditional Islamic prohibition of images;

2. It depicts Jesus not as a Muslim prophet but as the incarnate Son of God (his halo reads ο ων, the One Who Is, a title of divinity derived from the name of God that God gives to Moses in Exodus 3:14), in violation of the oft-repeated Qur’anic injunction that Allah has no Son (4:171; 9:30; 25:2; 39:4; 72:3; etc. etc.);

3. In line with #2, it depicts what Muslims would consider to be idolatry, as the holy child’s mother kneels and adores him;

4. In the beam or spear coming from heaven down to the child in the cradle, it depicts the activity of the Divine in the world, assuming the doctrine of the Trinity, which is rejected somewhat imprecisely in Qur’an 4:171 and 5:116;

5. The cradle resembles a casket, foreshadowing the redemptive death of Christ, which is denied in Qur’an 4:157.

Now, whether you are a Christian or not, whether or not you believe all or any of these things, the question that is before us this Christmas and every Christmas these days is whether or not people should be allowed to believe these things if they think they are true. Nowhere in the Islamic world today do people who believe these things enjoy full equality of rights with Muslims. In Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt and elsewhere Christians are frequently victimized because, as I have tried to show above, some of their core beliefs are considered blasphemous in authoritative Islam.

And that assumption of blasphemy, since Islam is a political program as well as a set of religious beliefs, does not allow for live-and-let live tolerance of those with whom one disagrees. The blasphemers and those who insult Islam must be subjugated under the rule of the Muslims. We see this agenda being articulated every day; we see Christians and others victimized by it every day; and we see the world largely yawning and indifferent as all this goes on.

This Christmas, remember that the Islamic supremacist program has you on its list. You may not be a Christian. You may not be a Jew. You may not be a Hindu. But the jihad is universal. You are on the list.

So this Christmas, may all of us whose conversion, subjugation, or death is envisioned by the adherents of Sharia stand together. Let us stand together as Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, secularists, what have you, and stand up against those who would kill us or subject us to institutionalized discrimination because they find our beliefs offensive.

For be assured: if we do not stand together, they will prevail. And if they do, and all the rich expressions of the human spirit, from Theophanes the Cretan to the fashioners of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, from Aristotle to Oriana, will be trampled into the mud, destroyed, exploded, ruined, effaced. We will all be the poorer. Our children will be the poorer.

Merry Christmas to all Christian Jihad Watchers who celebrate the Feast on this day.

On December 11, 2009, a group of Palestinian Christian leaders issued a 13 page document known as ”Kairos Palestine-2009: A moment of truth.” Having “reached a dead end” because of the “Israeli military occupation,” the leaders appealed to churches worldwide to treat Israel as they had apartheid South Africa by divestment and economic boycott.1

Given that the authors of this document include Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Lutheran Bishop of Jerusalem Munib Younan, Archbishop of Sebastia Atallah Hanna from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, we should not be surprised with this distorted description of the plight of Christian Arabs in Gaza, Judea and Samaria.

Justus Reid Weiner, an international human rights lawyer, warns that the present Christian Arab leadership is not telling the truth about the real conditions in these areas, and who is really responsible for perpetuating the anguish of Arab Christians. The “patriarchs and archbishops of Christian Arab denominations,” he says, “who are currently deceiving the international community, are self-interested people. They collaborate with the Muslim perpetrators of intimidation and violence. Against all evidence they claim that the Christians Arabs are living comfortable and prosperous lives. In fact the present situation is growing worse by the day.””2

Though these false accusations are not new, there is a danger they could change the way some of Israel’s Christian supporters view the Arab/Israeli conflict.3 That is why we need to examine what is really transpiring in these areas.

Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of the private Al-Mahd (Nativity) TV station in Beit-Shahur, warned that, “15 years from now there will be no Christians left in Bethlehem. Then you will need a torch to find a Christian here.”4 Population increases in the West Bank have been generally flat. In 1967 there were 40,000 Christians in the area; in 2006 there were approximately 45,800.5

The cause for the concern is the Islamic success at the municipal elections, 6 and the Muslim campaign of “intimidation” to force Christians to leave their homes and relinquish their land. After the Palestinian Authority (PA) took control of Bethlehem in 1994, they altered the municipal boundaries of the city and the predominately Christian suburbs of Beit Jallah and Beit Sahour to incorporate the 30,000 Muslims residing in the nearby refugee camps of Dehaisheh, El-Ayda and El-Azeh, and thousands of residents living near the Ta’amarah Bedouin tribe. These boundary modifications created sweeping changes in the demographic balance of Bethlehem.7

At the same time, Muslims were persuaded to move from nearby Hebron to Bethlehem where large-scale Muslim housing was being planned. In 1990, Christians comprised 60 percent of the population of Bethlehem.

By 2001 they were 20 percent of the population, resulting in a significant effect on local elections. As a result, PA chairman Yasser Arafat appointed a Muslim as Governor for the Bethlehem District, and the bureaucratic, security and political apparatus was purged of Christians.8

Muslims boycotted Christian businesses in Bethlehem’s Nativity Square forcing many of them out of business. Approximately ten percent remained by paying extortion money to Muslim terrorists. When a Christian owner of a café in Manger Square refused to be extorted, he was charged with collaborating with the Israelis, then later shot in the eye, and eventually had to escape from the country after having lived in Bethlehem for 30 years. Refusal to pay was often fatal. Furthermore, at the PA-controlled Voice of Palestine, Christian names are not permitted to be mentioned in the obituaries read on air. 9

Those who sell land to Jews are subject to the death penalty according to the Palestinian Land Law, a clear violation of two international rulings. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948), states that everyone has the right to own property. Part III, Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil And Political Rights states, “In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentences of death may be imposed for only the most serious of crimes. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court.”10

In this environment of “officially sanctioned intimidation,” Christians have considerable trouble buying land or selling their own property to other Christians. There is even the perception that selling to any non-Muslim is prohibited. The PA does not recognize Christian property rights as sacrosanct, including holy sites on the West Bank. As early as 1997, the PA Ministry of Information claimed that the Palestinian people “have assumed their natural right to of controlling parts of the Palestinian land, the most important of which under Palestinian national sovereignty is in the Palestinian city of the birthplace of Jesus Christ—Bethlehem.”11

Palestinian protection means little when Christian cemeteries and symbols are desecrated, property wrecked, monasteries robbed of gold and precious objects, and parishioners hindered from attending services. An atmosphere ofintimidation and trepidation is created, especially since the perpetrators can buy their way out from serving time. 12

Of all the abuses Christians are forced to endure, the treatment of their women is the most egregious. They are subjected to verbal sexual harassment and rape “perhaps the most blatant denial of basic human rights of religious identity.” Compounding the problem is that in the Middle East, a female who has been violated is regarded as having been sullied and “unfit for marriage.” Rather than bring shame to the victim, the rape is not openly acknowledged. Furthermore the victim must prove she has been raped. If not, a court can convict her of having had extra-marital relations.13

Raping a Christian woman often has fewer consequences than raping a Muslim one. The rapist knows that under a Muslim- controlled PA there is a greater chance of not being prosecuted. If the victim is Muslim, the perpetrator has to contend with members of her extended family, 14 who are obligated to obtain compensation or revenge. Each member is responsible for the welfare of individuals in the group. When one member is attacked, the group unites to protect themselves. They do not expect government agencies, officials, police, courts or any other institutions or persons to intervene on their behalf. 15

Raping of Christian women is also used to reduce the Christian population by ensuring that Christian men will not marry these women and have children. Another method to lower the Christian populace is to forceChristian women to marry Muslim men in violation of Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states, “Marriage shall be entered in only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.”16

Those willing to speak out openly about this bullying are subjected to death threats. Samir Qumsiyeh documented 160 attacks against Christians, including physical harassment, home robberies, and illegal seizure of land during the past several years. In response to Qumsiyeh’s own public statements, his home was fire-bombed.17

The 3,000 Christians living in Gaza among 1.2 million Muslims are also anxious and quite concerned about their future. Archimandrite Artemios, the Greek Orthodox priest who heads the St. Porphyrius church in Gaza, observed that Christians never felt so “endangered” as they do now. He did not know whether they were even still considered “part” of the Gaza community. 18

A rash of attacks has raised the level of their apprehension. On February 15, 2008, a library managed by the Young Men’s Christian Association was firebombed, resulting in the destruction of 10,000 books. The previous Fall a Christian book store owner was kidnapped and murdered. His shop was bombed twice. A Catholic church and a school were vandalized in August 2007. These incidents lead Artemios to conclude, “the edifice of tolerance is crashing down over our heads.”19 Before dawn on May 16, 2008 a bomb exploded outside the Zahwa Rosary School, a Christian school in Gaza city, operated by nuns primarily for Muslim students.20

Writing in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Hussein Shubakshi, a Saudi columnist complains about Christian emigration from the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Sudan and Syria which “has reached astonishing proportions.” In Gaza and the West Bank, there is “a plan to eradicate the entire deeply-rooted Christian presence from its territories.” There are 70,000 Palestinian Christian émigrés living in Chile, particularly in Santiago, the capital. Arabs from other areas emigrate to Europe, Australia, the U.S. and Canada.

That they are “openly and collectively” leaving by the thousands from Arab countries out of “fear, worry” and “society’s failures,” should be of grave concern, Shubakshi asserts. Failure to address the spread of extremism will be at a high price to all concerned. 21

What is particularly discouraging is that many church leaders throughout the world are aware of the myriad human rights abuses perpetrated by the PA against the Christian Arabs according to Justus Reid Weiner.22

Yet despite the beatings, theft of land, kidnappings, torture, firebombing of churches, forced marriages, rape, extortion, and sexual harassment, these church leaders “remain silent.” Others, “rather than identify the true Palestinian perpetrators of crimes against their people, take the politically correct path” by accusing Israel of being responsible for the strife and misery in the area. They do not even concede or criticize Muslim aggression. Church leaders often blame Israel for the decline of the Arab Christian population in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and for the suffering they experience under Hamas and Fatah rule.23

The Western Christian leaders involved in this anti-Israel activity are from the American Episcopalian and Presbyterian movements.24 Those taking comfort in evangelical backing for the Jewish state should think again. Jim Fletcher, publisher of the pro-Israel Balfour Books and an evangelical Christian, observes that there is an increasing erosion of evangelical support for Israel that is being influenced in part by the constant attacks against Israel in the Western media.25 Until there is a concerted effort to counter the lies and distortions within the Christian community, this erosion will continue.

22. Gerstenfeld, “Palestinian Crimes against Christian Arabs and Their Manipulation against Israel: Interview with Justus Reid Weiner,” op.cit.; For persecution of Christians in other Muslim countries, please see Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert, Their Blood Cries Out (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 1997); Nina Shea, In the Lion’s Den: A Shocking Account of Persecuted and Martyrdom of Christians Today and How We Should Respond (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman, 2007).

Everyone knows Yousuf al-Qaradawi, the renowned Salafist spiritual leader and protégé of Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi is notorious for his tirades against the Zionists and their infidel ways, and for his exhortations to fellow Muslims to return to the roots of their faith.

Now, in an amazing Christmas surprise, Yousuf al-Qaradawi has revealed his conversion to Christianity! Vlad Tepes presents his own translation of Sheikh Qaradawi’s message for Christmas 2009:

What importance has the recent Swiss referendum to ban the building of minarets (spires next to mosques from which the call to prayer is issued)?

Some may see the 57.5 to 42.5 percent decision endorsing a constitutional amendment as nearly meaningless. The political establishment being overwhelmingly opposed to the amendment, the ban will probably never go into effect. Only 53.4 percent of the electorate voted, so a mere 31 percent of the whole population endorses the ban. The ban does not address Islamist aspirations, much less Muslim terrorism. It has no impact on the practice of Islam. It prevents neither the building of new mosques nor requires that Switzerland’s four existing minarets be demolished.

It’s also possible to dismiss the vote as the quirky result of Switzerland’s unique direct democracy, a tradition that goes back to 1291 and exists nowhere else in Europe. Josef Joffe, the distinguished German analyst, sees the vote as a populist backlash against the series of humiliations the Swiss have endured in recent years culminating in the seizure of two businessmen in Libya and the Swiss president’s mortifying apology to win their release.

However, I see the referendum as consequential, and well so beyond Swiss borders.

First, it raises delicate issues of reciprocity in Muslim-Christian relations. A few examples: When Our Lady of the Rosary, Qatar‘s first-ever church opened in 2008, it did so minus cross, bell, dome, steeple, or signboard. Rosary’s priest, Father Tom Veneracion, explained their absence: “The idea is to be discreet because we don’t want to inflame any sensitivities.” And when the Christians of a town in Upper Egypt, Nazlet al-Badraman, finally after four years of “laborious negotiation, pleading, and grappling with the authorities,” won permission in October to restore a tottering tower at the Mar-Girgis Church, a mob of about 200 Muslims attacked them, throwing stones and shouting Islamic and sectarian slogans. The situation for Copts is so bad, they have reverted to building secret churches.

Why, the Catholic Church and others are asking, should Christians suffer such indignities while Muslims enjoy full rights in historically Christian countries? The Swiss vote fits into this new spirit. Islamists, of course, reject this premise of equality; Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned his Swiss counterpart of unspecified “consequences” of what he called anti-Islamic acts, implicitly threatening to make the minaret ban an international issue comparable to the Danish cartoon fracas of 2006.

Second, Europe stands at a crossroads with respect to its Muslim population. Of the three main future prospects – everyone getting along, Muslims dominating, or Muslims rejected – the first is highly improbable but the second and third seem equally possible. In this context, the Swiss vote represents a potentially important legitimation of anti-Islamic views. The vote inspired support across Europe, as signaled by online polling sponsored by the mainstream media and by statements from leading figures. Here follows a small sampling:

France: 49,000 readers at Le Figaro, by a 73-27 percent margin, would vote to ban new minarets in their country. 24,000 readers at L’Express agreed by an 86-12 percent margin, with 2 percent undecided. A leading columnist, Ivan Rioufol of Le Figaro, wrote an article titled “Homage to the Resistance of the Swiss People.” President Nicolas Sarkozy was quoted as saying that “the people, in Switzerland as in France, don’t want their country to change, that it be denatured. They want to keep their identity.”

Spain: 14,000 readers of 20 Minutos voted 93-6 percent in favor of the statement “Good, we must curb Islamization’s growing presence” and against “Bad, it is an obstacle to the integration of immigrants.” 35,000 readers of El MUndo replied 80-20 percent that they support a Swiss-like banning of minarets.

Although not scientific, the lop-sidedness of these (and other) polls, ranging from 73 to 93 percent majorities endorsing the Swiss referendum, signal that Swiss voters represent growing anti-Islamic sentiments throughout Europe. The new amendment also validates and potentially encourages resistance to Islamization throughout the continent.

For these reasons, the Swiss vote represents a possible turning point for European Islam.

Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Dec. 9, 2009 update: (1) A scientific poll of Belgians sponsored by Le Soir weekly and carried out by iVOX finds that 59.3 percent of the Belgian population favors a Swiss-like prohibition on building new minarets and 56.7 percent want to ban the building of mosques. The poll of 1,050 persons was taken on December 3 through 5 and has an accuracy of within 3 percent.

The Swiss ban on mosque-top minarets on the ground of its being a symbol of political domination of Islam, an instrument incompatible with the secular Swiss society with strict separation between religion and state, has attracted widespread condemnations worldwide.

Most of all, Switzerland is poised to be brought before the European or the U.N. Commission of Human Rights because the ban, if enforced, would constitute a violation of religious freedom of Muslims.

Does the minaret ban constitute a violation of Muslims’ religious freedom?

It may constitute such a violation, but only to a small measure, as their freedom of worship, including the freedom to build mosques, is not tampered with. The Minaret, religiously, is not a major component of Islam.

On the flipside, the Swiss ban may represent a backlash against the widespread Muslim violation of religious freedom — even the right to life — of non-Muslims.

While the world has engaged in the intense condemnation of the Swiss minaret ban as a violation of Muslims’ religious freedom, hundreds, probably thousands, of non-Muslims across the Muslim world have been suffering intimidation and violence, even death, for simply being non-Muslim or trying to observe their religious rituals and rights in the most peaceful and submissive manner.

Over the past weeks, while the Swiss minaret ban hysteria was going on, a 3,000-strong hysterical Muslim mob engaged in rioting in Egypt, attacking Christians and their businesses — a frequent occurrence. Additionally, Muslim extremists in Uganda attacked a Sunday church congregation, wounding many and damaging the church; Islamic radicals executed a Christian convert in Somalia; a Pakistani Christian had to go into hiding after Islamist demanded his conversion to Islam (or death); a man in Iran faces hanging for apostatizing to Christianity. Most alarmingly, a survey found 59% of Muslims in Turkey, the most secular and tolerant Islamic nation and an aspirant to E.U. membership, opposed open worship by non-Muslims.

Naïve and uneducated observers may find the Swiss ban on minarets a violation of religious rights of Muslims, but in reality, as demonstrated, the Swiss vote is a ban on a symbol of political power, disguised as an innocuous religious icon. It, therefore, does not, technically, violate any religious right of anyone, whatsoever.

Most of all, nations with their skylines riddled with giant and elegant minarets are also the lands of the most extreme violation of religious rights of non-Muslims, a trend which has been worsening fast.

As discussed elsewhere, Islamic minarets did not emerge at the birth of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad, who founded a puritanical and Spartan religious creed, fitting for the underdeveloped and poverty-stricken Bedouin Arab society, would undoubtedly have opposed the erection of sky-piercing elegant minarets; he disapproved of the construction of gorgeous buildings saying: “Truly the most unprofitable thing that eats the wealth of a believer is building,” and “Every expense of the believer will be rewarded except the expense of the building.”

Minarets are, in fact, a Christian icon, first introduced to mosques by the Godless Umayyad rulers a century after the beginning of Islam — also in spite of strong condemnations by the pious for incorporating a Christian icon into Islamic houses of worship, and for building a structure higher than mosque-walls.

Since then, sky-piercing spear-like minarets gradually became what the renowned Turkish sociologist and nationalist poet, Ziya Gökalp, described in a poem as: “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our army…” Affirmation of this message by Tayyip Recep Erdogan, the current Islamist Prime Minister of Turkey, in a 1998 public gathering, earned him a short prison-term for inciting religious hatred.

Since then, ‘bayonet-shaped’ minarets started gracing skyline of the centers of Islamic power, conquered by the sword: Cairo, Spain, Damascus, Constantinople, Delhi and more. Since then, wherever Muslim holy warriors went with the aid of swords in pursuance of Jihad for global conquest, the first thing they did was to raise imposing mosques, fitted with elegant minarets, often on the site of destroyed temples or churches, and frequently using remains of the destroyed religious structures.

The Quwat-al-Islam (Might of Islam) Mosque and the Qutb Minaret in Delhi are ideal examples: their construction started in 1192, well ahead of the firm establishment of Islamic power, the Delhi Sultanate, in 1206, and that they were constructed from the remains of many Hindu temples destroyed in the area.

Once mosques with elegant minarets were erected, symbolizing the establishment of Islamic power, these structures became, as Gokalp perfectly described, the “bayonets” and “barracks” of Islam. They became Islamic powerhouses from where ruthless and unflinching Jihad was unleashed against the non-Muslim peoples of surrounding territories, causing untold human suffering, death and destruction. Notably, Islamic Jihad claimed the lives of estimated 270 million people, 60–80 million in India. This would substantiate the thesis of Gokalp/Erdogan and the Swiss voters that Islamic minarets are, fundamentally, a symbol of Islam’s political power. Moreover, it carries a hisotry of extreme violence and oppression.

But, that is history; just ask the pagans (not extant anymore) and Jews of Europe: Churches, with their minarets, were symbols and centers of no less brutality and oppression throughout the Middle Ages. Today, however, churches mostly represent apolitical and spiritual ‘houses of worship;’ secular societies can live with them, fitted with minarets or not, in near-perfect harmony.

Furthermore, non-Christian communities in the lands of churches, as in the West, can exercise their religious freedom with unrestrained liberty, although Muslims have come under increasing suspicion, and even some restrictions, but only in recent years, thanks mostly, if not exclusively, to theMuslims’ own making.

Can the same be said of the lands of Islamic minarets?

Look at Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and such other Islamic countries, the skylines of whose major cities are adorned with the world’s finest minarets in great numbers.

In Saudi Arabia, the heartland of Islam, one risks a heavy jail-term for carrying a Bible or another non-Islamic religious book, while public display of non-Muslim worship may even cost someone his or her life by beheading.

Even in Islamic countries like Indonesia, Malaysia or Bangladesh — highly praised in the West for their moderation — erecting a church, despite its being a completely spiritual place of worship, is next to impossible. In countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Egypt, and Pakistan, non-Muslim worshippers are subjected to regular harassment, overt violence, and destruction of non-Muslim ways of life, religious places and business establishments.

Muslims are the fastest-growing populations in the West, ten times faster than non-Muslims in the UK, thus, putting European countries on the course to become Muslim-dominated in a few decades to by the turn of this century. Muslims in the West are, on an average, more pious, radical and even violent than their average brethren in Islamic countries.

We have seen over the years how mosques in Western countries have been used for preaching intolerance, violence and even terrorism against the host nations, while Muslims create Islamic ghettos, turning them into no-go zones for non-Muslims in countries such as France, Sweden and Norway, to name a few. Muslim protesters on the streets of Europe even dare to attack and chase away police and security officials.

All indications suggest that in countries of the West, when Muslims would dominate the population in number, the rights of non-Muslims, including religious freedom, would get worse than what non-Muslims enjoy in Islamic countries today. Muslim immigrants are already the major attackers of gays and Jews in Europe. The citizenry of the West, therefore, has valid and rational reasons to be duly alarmed by these developments and prospects, although willfully ignored or shied away by the political elite.

While it is good that liberal papers, like Australia’s The Age, have termed the Swiss decision an ‘Irrational response to rational anxiety about Islam,’ and have started calling the Swiss anxiety about Muslims a ‘rational’ one, the Swiss referendum on minarets should also be deemed a well-measured and rational one. From the religious perspective, it is a negligible compromise for Muslims. From the political point of view, in which minarets stand for a political symbol sitting on a history of monumental violence, terror and opporession, the ban is a most legitimate one, given the strictly secular nature of Swiss society; political icons should not be a part of houses of worship.

What is more important to realize is that the violent legacy of minarets continues in Islamic lands as we have seen. There is another way of measuring the ongoing violation of the rights of hundreds of millions of non-Muslims caused by minarets. Minarets are used for calling the faithful to prayers, to submit to the Islamic Deity, five times a day in blaring loudness. In a civilized society, while Muslims should have religious freedom, non-Muslims must also have the right not to hear the call to Islamic prayer and submission to Islam repeatedly on a daily basis. Moreover, raising opposition to this wiolation of non-Muslim rights could result in violence by Muslims, thus, forcing non-Muslims to either put up with it or shut up. Coercion to silence by violence or threats of it, should not be unacceptable in a civilized society, if it wants to maintian the status quo.

Islam’s problem with secular societies runs much, much, deeper than minarets. So far, Muslims have refused, or showed numbness or intellectual incapacity, to realize what is needed be a successful part of civilized secular-democratic societies. The Swiss minaret ban acts as a rude but small message to Muslims, helping them to become aware of what is expected of them to be an inclusive part of the secular West.

The question is: will Muslims get the message?

If they do, it could be the first smooth step in resolving Islam’s monumental problem with secular societies. If they do not, which is the indication so far, the clash of civilizations could be inevitable. And whichever side wins that battle, it will come at a heavy cost. Our collective humanity would be the loser.

After the Swiss voted overwhelmingly to ban the construction of minarets in their country, it is time to examine possible alternative solutions. This essay proposes, in the spirit of dialogue and compromise, to replace the traditional design with a modern, resource-saving alternative.

First a little historical background. The minaret is not a classical Islamic design, in that it does not stem from Muhammad directly. From the Sirat, we have this account (Ibn Ishaq, p. 757):

When the apostle raided a people he waited until the morning. If he heard a call to prayer he held back; if he did not hear it he attacked. We came to Khaybar by night, and the apostle passed the night there; and when morning came he did not hear the call to prayer, so he rode and we rode with him.

This is from the opening of the Battle of Khaybar. Muhammad and the early Muslims had traveled some 150 kilometers to reach it, and soon conquered the under-defended oasis, turning the Jews into dhimmis until their final expulsion under caliph Umar. The victorious battle is still held in reverence among Muslims, who use the battle cry ”Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahoud, jaish Muhammad sa yaoud” (”Khaybar, Khaybar, Oh Jews, the Army of Muhammad will return!”) to intimidate Jews today, for example in demonstrations in Copenhagen and elsewhere, January 2009.

We shall not here deliberate the morality of the attack on Khaybar. What matters is Muhammad awaiting the call to prayer. He had a clear policy distinguishing believers and non-believers, as he would only assault people not already in submission to him and his religion. Back then, there we no minarets to indicate that a given town or area was subject to Islamic rule, thus the waiting was needed.

Arabic: “beacon”), in Islamic religious architecture, the tower from which the faithful are called to prayer five times each day by a muezzin, or crier. Such a tower is always connected with a mosque and has one or more balconies or open galleries. At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, the call to prayer was made from the highest roof in the vicinity of the mosque. The earliest minarets were former Greek watchtowers and the towers of Christian churches. The oldest minaret in North Africa is at al-Qayrawan, Tunisia. It was built between 724 and 727 and has a massive square form.[…]

These towers were built to be “landmarks of Islam”—to be visible from afar and to stamp a site with Islamic character.

Minarets are built to ”stamp a site with Islamic character”, not for their religious signifiance. Actually, no building should in principle have any religious significance, for only Allah is to be worshipped, not stones, buildings and holy water. The reality, of course, is somewhat different. The core purpose of a minaret remains to mark the ownership, that this land is Islamic.

A side purpose was that of making calls to prayer. This had a practical in the days before amplified speakers, but is neither a traditional religious dogma nor a technical necessity today. Further, most people would rather be without five daily interruptions for the religious duty of prayer. Duty is the proper word in context, for there is no benefit of performing it, apart from a possible feeling of pleasure from having obliged to a religious demand.

Now, the idea of putting land under religious rule, Islamic rule in particular, is something we don’t quite like in the West. Here, religion is primarily a personal, not a political matter, and we have a certain dislike for the idea of permitting alien landmarks to dominate our lands, not to mention having religious law dominate our societies.

Truly moderate imams, like Taj Hargey in the United Kingdom, make it clear that minarets are not really needed. In his article “Minarets are not an essential part of Islam” (Times Online), he states clearly that “The Swiss vote does not infringe Muslim religious rights”, and proceeds to make the point that Islam will do just fine without minarets:

Switzerland’s referendum vote to ban minarets […] does not infringe the religious liberty of Swiss Muslims. Minarets remain emblematic of mosques in the Muslim heartlands but there is no theological reason why houses of worship in the West have to incorporate such towers.

Fundamentalist imams who hold the different views have, according to Hargey, a different and dangerous agenda, one that will stoke Islamophobia and conflict. That agenda has to do with the minarets as symbols of conquest.

Turkish notions of Islam and conquest
Some Islamic leaders, like the current Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, take the idea of connecting Islam with conquest quite a bit further. Erdogan stated in 1997:

The minarets are our bayonets; the domes are our helmets
Mosques are our barracks, the believers are soldiers
This holy army guards my religion
Almighty Our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom.

It has been said that Erdogan was merely reciting a poem by Ziya Gökalp. In reality, Erdogan changed the first stanza of the poem significantly. The original, published in 1913 in the magazine Halka Dogru, opens as follows:

Holding my rifle in my hand, keeping my faith in my heart I wish two things:
The faith and the homeland My home is the army,
my sovereign is the Sultan Strengthen my Sultan,
Almighty Give him long life,
Almighty Our journey is our victory, the end is martrydom. (Eurozine)

The remaining stanzas of the poem remains the same, except that one praising the Turkish armyh was skipped. Erdogan obviously wanted to make the point about the military significance of the mosque.

This significance is also reflected in the naming of mosques constructed in Europe. A popular name for grand mosques built by Turkish communities is ‘Fathi Camii’, meaning ‘Conqueror Mosque’. German professor Ursula Spuler-Stegemann inquired about the choice of name at the inaugeration of the Fathi Camii mosque in Kiel, Germany. She got the candid response that the choice was ”In the spirit of Sultan Mehmet II, the Conqueror”.

The greatest feat of Sultan Mehmed II was the conquest of Constantinople (1453). After his conquest of the city, the landmark of Constantinople, the grand Byzantine church Hagia Sophia (”Holy Wisdom”), was converted to a mosque, with a wooden minaret being added to show that the area was now under the rule of Islam. Later the four large minarets we know today were added, making the former church a symbol of Islamic dominance over formerly Christian land.

The naming of new mosques in the heart of Europe is not exactly tactful, nor a great example of peaceful interfaith dialogue and respect. One may wonder, of course, if these mosques are built and supported by a particular radical branch of Turkish Islamists, if mainstream, moderate Turkish Muslims oppose this tactless behaviour towards their host countries? Few, if any, such responses have been found. The supposedly moderated Turkish PM Erdogan stated on the notion of a ‘moderate’ Islam:

These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.

(Milliyet, August 21, 2007)

The Islamic tradition for conquest of infidel land is well known, and we need not dwell at the details of this. Interested readers can find more in Andrew Bostom’s book (tome) The Legacy of Jihad.

Mordern times: Dialogue, not conquest
Now, these are modern times. We do not need any more wars of conquest, the use of intimidation should be a thing of the past, and in particular the idea that religious should dominate our societies is utterly ridiculous. We are grown up human beings, each endowed with a rational mind, and with the capability to discuss in civil ways what laws make sense and for what reasons. Religion as a source of law for modern societies simply does not make sense.

Nor does erecting monuments dedicated to the dominance of a particular religion over the land. These would not only be antithetical to a modern, pluralistic society, but would also attract people who are unscrupulous enough to attempt to force theocratic systems upon an otherwise free society.

Our modern dear leaders, who are engaged in projects like Alliance of Civilizations, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, would certainly agree that the age of intimidation, threats and conquest is over. In their ideal world, nothing of that kind could possibly take place. Further, they would see no problems related to the introduction of Islam in Europe, have no fear of Europe becoming Islamized, and express their full confidence that odd details like erecting ‘Conqueror Mosques’ are merely culturally enjoyable name games, with no hidden agenda or deceptive aims behind them.

But then, our dear leaders can rightfully be expected to do more than telling us not to worry about the course of events and seek more ‘dialogue’. Some political systems are beyond the reach of dialogue, they deserve a clear ‘No!’, isolation, and close scrutiny of relevant authorities. Totalitarian systems in particular.

Now, the term ‘Totalitarian’ has in the ears of many become merely a derogative, voiding it of its real significance, the idea of a totally controlled society, with rules and regulations for every aspect of the citizens’ lives. The term was coined by Giovanni Amendola in 1923, and picked up by Benito Mussolini, who described his supposedly perfect system in this slogan:

Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

There is one significant difference between this and the fully Islamic Sharia state: In the Sharia state, the laws are given a priori and cannot be changed by ‘mere’ humans, only interpreted. Which has to be done in accordance with a millennium of Islamic jurisprudence, and thus cannot deviate significantly from or contradict the practices in the Islamic empires of the past, such as the Ottoman Empire. A system like this is obviously not compatible with modern, pluralistic societies and their secular Constitutions.

Islamists vs. the public vote
In spite of these differences between the theocratic empires of the past and the modern, secular democracies, there are still Islamic organisations longing for the time of the caliphate, seeking to restore the uncontested, supreme position of Islam in the societies they happen to live in. A major player in this is the Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928, with the express purpose of bringing back the caliphate, which had been abolished by Kemal Atatürk in 1924.

Organisations such as Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir and others are actively seeking to restore the caliphate, and for this purpose seek to erect symbols of Islamic dominance whereever possible. European citizens understanding the implications of this will resist for quite obvious reasons, as expressed in the recent Swiss referendum banning the construction of minarets in Switzerland (BBC report).

The result of this referendum has caused grave concern in Islamist circles, and has been widely condemned by global government advocates, Amnesty International, CSCE and many others. The CSCE, for one, demands that the result be overturned, in order that the Swiss citizens may not run the risk of being viewed as ‘intolerant’. In light of the many condemnations it will be interesting to see if the Swiss will eventually be permitted to settle the matter in accordance with the wishes of their citizens, or if international agencies will trump national sovereignty and decide that the citizens cannot be permitted to make such decisions in their country.

A compromise proposal
But this hard stance is disingenuous, for a compromise is absolutely possible. Erecting minarets without the aspect of dominating the surrounding could easily be achieved, by imposing a limit of five feet (1½ meter) on the height of minarets. These would still express Islamic culture and tradition, while avoiding the unneeded and deeply offensive aspect of dominating our free and secular societies.

While technically possible in a loudspeaker-sized miniret, there is no particular need to use a it to call for prayer. In these modern times there are much less intrusive alternatives, like using text messages for those who want to live with religious duties, leaving anyone not interested free to spend their times for other purposes. There really is no need to disturb the many with calls for prayer heeded only by the few. Also, by refraining from using public calls for rituals that many would consider pure superstition, a tool for intimidation by religious zealots is removed.

There’s another beneficial aspect of moving from minarets to minirets: Minarets are basically unproductive. They make no product, they guide no ships, cars or air planes (the name ‘minaret’ originally means ‘lighthouse’), causes no improvements whatsoever in our physical lives. For that reasons, minimizing the amount of resources spent on these purpose-less structures makes sense. Downscaling a 50-foot minaret to a 5-foot miniret saves 90 percent of the material – in each of the three dimensions. That multiplies up to a factor 1000 when the two horizontal and the vertical dimensions are taken into consideration, a rather significant saving that should go down well in these somewhat troubled times.

What then would the purpose of a miniret be? From a logical perspective, there is none. From a religious perspective, where logic doesn’t matter, it still would have. It is a remembrance of Islamic cultural heritage, voided of its imperialistic aspects, and put into proper perspective, that it is not an indispensable or integral part of Islam. Those who want minirets can be free to erect them, and those who are concerned about the imperialistic aspect of minarets should have no problem with a physically benign structure that does not attempt to dominate the townships nor the people living there.

There are many aspects of political Islam that deserve suspicion and scrutiny. Any move to implement Sharia law, undermine law enforcement and dodge our Constitutions should be countered quickly and firmly. Experience over the last decade makes it clear that the label ‘Islamic’ is sufficient to warrant some suspicion for anti-Constitutional activities. That scrutiny is best left to our intelligence services, whose job is to defend our Constitutions and halt any subversive activity on sight. A task that notably takes precedence over any calls for ‘religious sensitivity’ and the like.

We need to stay vigilant, look through deception, and to make clear calls against any subversive activities. The minarets are symbols of Islam as a dominant political system rather than a religion, and have no place in the West.

Regular Gates of Vienna readers are familiar with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, who recently gave a series of exemplary Counterjihad presentations at the OSCE Human Dimension roundtable in Vienna a few weeks ago.

Those who speak out prominently against Islamization sooner or later face the wrath of the dhimmi establishment. Anyone who sticks his head up over the parapet risks having it shot off.

And so it is for Elisabeth. She dared to speak the truth about Islam. Now, like Geert Wilders and hundreds of other Europeans, she has run afoul of her country’s hate speech laws, and faces prosecution for what she said.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was interviewed today by S.M. Steinitz for profil (Austria’s equivalent to Time or Der Spiegel). Many thanks to Jihad Watch for publicizing Elisabeth’s case:

“I Am Against Dialogue”

A criminal complaint is being filed against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for “hate speech” under Austrian law, essentially the same thing that Susanne Winter was convicted of early this year.

Elisabeth gave a presentation about Islam at an FPÖ-organized seminar, and said some of the usual things that anti-jihad advocates say when they talk about Islam. A left-wing magazine, which had planted someone in the audience, caused charges to be brought against her at the same time as they publicized it in their magazine.

Elisabeth held the controversial Islam Seminar at the FPÖ-political academy. Charges of defamation of a religious group have been filed against the daughter of a diplomat. This is her only interview in which she explains her views.

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff, are you afraid of Muslims?

No, I am afraid of political Islam, which is massively gaining influence in Europe. That is what I am against.

There are powerful groups who are working towards the Islamization of Europe. That is a fact. What can we gain from closing our eyes and ignoring this? Even Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi says: “There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without swords, without guns, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists, we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50+ million Muslims [in Europe] will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.” A head of state confirms what our politicians deny. What else has to happen until we finally get it?

There are people who see the growth of Islam in Europe as an opportunity for a completely re-engineered pluralistic society.

The vision of a pluralistic society does not withstand a reality check. Show me one example where this has been a success. Wherever Muslims have been given the opportunity for self-organization they have established parallel societies. See Berlin-Kreuzberg, see Lyon. See also Great Britain, where parts of shariah have been implemented.

I see signs of an erosion of our way of life. In large cities massive changes are evident in the streets. There are discussions about a ban on teaching the Turkish sieges of Vienna; St. Nicholas is banned from visiting children in [public] kindergartens.

And you want to change that.

Yes, very much. But why is that so bad? In Bhutan, the king is applauded because he allows only a certain number of foreigners into the country. He prescribes a certain dress code and mandatory cultural events. Bhutan is a small country that wants to retain its cultural identity in a globalized world. Austria is also a small country with similar challenges. Why is the one country commended and the other berated?

According to NEWS, you defamed Islam. That is why NEWS has filed charges citing defamation of religion. Your reply?

One can report anyone to the authorities. I am not guilty of defamation. And even if some consider my words harsh, I definitely did not make them in a public forum since the seminars were held before a group of people who registered beforehand.

You are accused of making the following statements, among others: “Muslims rape children because of their religion”, or “Mohammed enjoyed contact with children.” Why the polemics?

This is a clever strategy. You and all the others who are now crying wolf are locked in a choice of words. As a result you are able to maneuver yourselves away from the main point. It is a fact that Mohammed married a six-year-old at the age of 56. To this day men in Islamic countries view this as legitimizing marriage to a minor, thereby causing rape and life-long trauma. This is the problem we need to address, and not how circumscribe this bitter reality.

Are you afraid that these customs will become part of Europe?

There are groups who have this goal. In every Islamic system you find that human rights of young girls are in grave danger. Look at Saudi Arabia. Look at the former socialist South Yemen. When Khomeini came to power he lowered the minimum age for girls to get married to nine years.

You are being accused of Islamophobia. Does this bother you?

A phobia is an irrational fear. My worries are not irrational, but justified. One of these days our politicians will have to recognize this fact. People like me are not right-wing xenophobes.

But what are you?

We are people defending the principles of freedom and equality in a secular society. I criticize political Islam and its political manifestations. No democratic country can take this right away from anyone.

Why do critics of Islam nearly always use polemics?

And what [if not polemics] did the article in NEWS use? There are comments about my body, there is ridicule about how I eat. Sexist attacks below the belt against women making unpopular statements are a manifestation of a male-dominated system. There are many critics of Islam. However, it’s always women like Brigitte Bardot or Oriana Fallaci who are attacked below the belt.

Leading politicians have sharply criticized your seminars. Are they all members of a male-dominated system?

These politicians do not know the contents of my seminars. All they know are out-of-context quotes from an article in a glossy magazine. I also find the reaction of these politicians strange. They get away with much worse.

For instance?

SPÖ secretary general Laura Rudas, who calls for a public ban of the headscarf. I would not do something like that.

On the other hand, you are being compared to Susanne Winter (FPÖ). She was convicted of defamation because she accused the prophet Mohammed of pedophilia.

I do not want to be compared to Susanne Winter. There are no similarities between us. She is an active politician, she acts in a public forum. I do not.

You hold your seminars for the FPÖ-Political Academy.

But I am not politically active. I am also not a member of FPÖ. What I do is offer seminars on the topic of Islam and I can be booked. The FPÖ academy did just that. I do not want to comment on Susanne Winter’s statements. But in my opinion she does not know much about Islam.

In what way are you qualified to hold these seminars?

I have an M.A. in Diplomatic and Strategic Studies. I spent part of my childhood in Islamic countries, worked and lived there. I have personally experienced life in Islamic societies and I see evidence of a trend towards the Islamization of Europe.

How do you view yourself?

I am a mother and a feminist. I want my daughter and my niece to grow up in freedom and dignity. I want the same for all Austrian citizens, and that includes Austrian Muslims.

In your seminar you do not distinguish between Muslims and Islamists.

Oh yes, I do. I do that because I know how much Muslims worldwide are suffering under the Islamic yoke. I say that in all my seminars, only NEWS did not bother to quote that. Why do think so many Muslims try to escape from Islamic countries like Iran and Afghanistan? Because life there is unbearable.

So you want to liberate Muslims from Islam?

Muslims have to liberate themselves; from this static and tenacious Islam that is hellbent on following norms from the seventh century. The result is that wherever there are Islamic societies there is no progress, but steps backwards, especially in the realm of human rights and democracy.

But isn’t the referendum on the minaret ban in Switzerland also a step backwards?

The result of the referendum is the best proof that politicians should finally take the Islamization of Europe seriously.

What do you think about the reaction from the Islamic world regarding the referendum?

The Islamic world leads in discrimination against religious minorities. Christians are persecuted and discriminated against in all Islamic countries. You have to remember that the Christian culture is not one that immigrated or is foreign; it is indigenous. There is a complete ban on building churches in Turkey. And now Erdogan speaks of discrimination against Muslims in Switzerland? Where are Muslims being discriminated against in Switzerland? The European elite allows the Islamic countries to walk all over themselves, all the while bowing down to them.

Are you in favor of a ban on minarets in Austria?

I will not answer that. Instead, I will quote the now so agitated Turkish prime minister who once said, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

Do you feel misunderstood?

Above all, I believe that my rights are being curtailed. Currently I do not notice that I have freedom of speech or opinion.

Haven’t you yourself strained this right?

No, I don’t believe I did. Above all, I did not speak publicly. What is all the commotion about?

But now it has become public.

I only say out loud what others are thinking. But these concerns are not taken seriously.

Are you against a dialogue with the Islamic world?

I am against a dialogue with political Islam. I am, however, in favor of a broad discussion about human rights and personal freedoms.

You criticize Islam as discriminating. What do mean by that?

Just one example: In Islam non-Muslims are called kuffar, non-believers. These infidels are all defamed and not considered equal. This is offensive. Where are the protests?

What are your negative experiences in Islamic countries?

People in these countries are continuously restricted. This leads to aggressions and reporting people to the authorities and other absurd situations. For example, a (Coptic) member of the Austrian embassy in Kuwait was verbally abused at the post office because he was mailing Christmas letters. It was Ramadan and he must not eat or drink publicly. He said, surprised, “But I am not eating!” “Oh yes, you are. You are licking off the adhesive part of the stamp.” This is daily routine in an Islamic society.

Can you really use a single occurrence as an example?

I can tell you hundreds of similar single occurrences. This story is not a single case, but a social program.

Will you continue with your seminars?

Yes. There are requests coming in from all over Austria. I will continue to defend my right to freedom of speech. I will not be gagged.

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

As I have stated my essay The Coming Crash, I think we need to realize that the current ideological order is broken and beyond repair. There will probably some sort of pan-Western economic and social collapse in the not-too-distant future; I fear this is too late to avoid by now. The people who support the ruling paradigm are too powerful, and the paradigm itself contains so many flaws, that it cannot be fixed. It needs to crash. Instead of wasting time and energy on attempting to fix what cannot be fixed we need to prepare as best as we can for the coming crash and hopefully regroup to create a stronger and healthier culture afterward.

We are currently in the middle of the White Guilt Gold Rush. If you are a white Westerner you may not have fully realized this, but I can assure you that the rest of the world knows this. The trick is to keep the white man on the defensive and vaguely guilty at all times so that he can be squeezed for money. The climate quotas for carbon dioxide constitute a thinly disguised form of global Socialism through the UN-sponsored redistribution of wealth.

The recent scientific scandal about fake data regarding man-made global warming is just the tip of the iceberg. There are currently so many different layers of lies from “gender equality” via IQ differences to climate that it is virtually impossible to deal with all of them. Our entire society has essentially become one big lie. Our media, our schools and our political leaders repeat these lies every single day; those daring to question them are immediately ostracized.

Since the EU has forced through the EU Constitution/Lisbon Treaty and in essence abolished not just popular influence on EU policies but dissolved dozens of nation states, the self-appointed European elites have in effect banned any legal opposition to their rule. It is no longer possible to formally oppose their policies within the regular political channels. Given that the same elites appear hell-bent on running the entire continent into the ground, this leaves the options of rebellion or a structural collapse. I don’t think we will see open rebellion just yet, although this could change if the economy deteriorates further. This means that the most likely way out now is a structural collapse, and I fear that’s exactly what we are going to get.
– – – – – – – – –
Didn’t the Obama Administration with international aid “save” the world from a looming financial crisis? Of course they didn’t. The main problem for the USA is that the national debt keeps rising while the national IQ keeps falling. This hasn’t changed one bit in the past year. On the contrary, it is worse now than it was before, and it looks like it will be worse still next year and the year after that. As long as this situation remains unchanged, my bet is that the price of gold will continue to rise as people seek safe harbor from the collapsing US dollar.

Although other industrialized countries have heavy debt loads, too, the case of the United States is especially serious because of its sheer size. Had the USA been a private person he would probably have been declared bankrupt a long time ago. But the United States is not a private person; it is still the world’s largest economy and has the world’s largest armed forces. As writer Takuan Seiyo states in the latest installment of his brilliant From Meccania to Atlantis series: “The strongest, most admired country in the world until just a few years ago is now a cautionary tale of the wages of sin and stupidity told to Chinese schoolchildren.”

I don’t know what the future holds for the USA. It could split apart along ethic and ideological lines in a Second American Civil War, or it could become just another Latin American country along with Canada, in which case all of America will be Latin America.

I could add that I don’t hate Latin America. If we do end up with a series of nasty Multicultural civil wars in Western Europe it is possible that some areas of South America could be better places to live than Birmingham or Marseilles. However, Latin America never has been and probably never will be a major force in world politics. If the United States declines this will shift global power back to Eurasia, where it has been throughout most of human history. China will in all likelihood be a leading player and perhaps the dominant one.

I am increasingly convinced that some of the developments we are witnessing are deliberate and that there is a long-term goal among certain powerful groups of breaking down Western nations to facilitate the creation of a global oligarchy. The lies we are being served are virtually identical in every single Western country. I’ve had discussions about this with my Chinese friend Ohmyrus who thinks this is caused by a structural flaw in our democratic system. I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but there are other forces at work here as well.

According to Herman Van Rompuy, the newly-installed President of the European Union, the climate conference in Copenhagen is a step towards the “global management” of our planet. As author Bat Ye’or has demonstrated and as I have confirmed in my own book Defeating Eurabia, the EU is actively collaborating with Islamic countries to rewrite the textbooks in European countries to make them more “Islam-friendly.”

It is well-documented that there are detailed long-term plans to expand the EU to include Muslim North Africa and the Middle East. This has been publicly confirmed by several high-ranking officials, including the British Foreign Minister in 2007. One newspaper leaked EU plans to import 50 million (!) more Africans to Europe in the coming decades, although urban communities across Western Europe are already in the process of breaking down due to mass immigration. A high-ranking official from Tony Blair’s Labour Government in Britain openly confirmed that they promoted mass immigration to import voters and alter the ethnic composition of the country. Similar policies are undoubtedly being promoted in countries from Germany to Australia.

In June 2009, only a few years after a group of Arabs killed thousands of Americans in a Jihadist attack, former US President Bill Clinton told an Arab American audience that soon the USA will no longer have a majority of people with a European heritage. He believed that “this is a very positive thing.” It wasn’t that first time that Mr. Clinton expressed such views.

Jens Orback, Democracy Minister in the then Social Democratic Swedish government, during a radio debate stated that “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” He took it for granted that the natives will become a minority in their own country and that they have no right to oppose this.

I could add that Sweden has no colonial history. Neither have Finland or Norway, which gained their independence as late as the twentieth century, yet both countries are still force-fed mass immigration of alien peoples. The “colonial guilt” argument used against the natives in Britain, France and other Western European countries is bogus. The real issue is that we white Westerners should not have any countries to call our own. Our countries should be giant Multicultural theme parks for everybody else, financed by brainwashed white taxpayers.

Arguably the leading academic Multiculturalist in my country, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen of the University in Oslo, who has received millions in government funding for his projects, in an interview stated frankly that “The most important blank spot exists now in deconstructing the majority so thoroughly that it can never be called the majority again.” This is the ultimate goal of Western Multiculturalists. Make no mistake about it. Needless to say, this agenda is only pushed in white majority Western countries. All other countries are allowed to retain their demographic profile; only the West is required to commit suicide.

Law and order is rapidly breaking down in major cities across Western Europe, and indeed the Western world, as immigrant gangs rule the streets. The law is only upheld against the “racist” white majority population to ensure that they keep on paying ridiculously high taxes to authorities that do nothing but lie to them, insult them and aid their national destruction.

As the eminent English writer El Inglés says, “The nature and severity of the problems we face are now sufficiently clear for European patriots to start asking themselves what actions they and others like them will eventually be called upon to take when the failure of the state reaches a critical point, and what sort of battlefield they will be arrayed upon at that moment.”

One thing we absolutely need to do is to break the stranglehold that Marxist and Leftist groups have successfully established over the media and the education system in Western countries. These people need to be squashed. Maybe some readers think this sounds too harsh, but I firmly believe that we cannot deal effectively with our external enemies as long as our internal enemies control the information flow. We must reject those who promote a Globalist world, including multinational corporations that desire unlimited access to cheap labor.

Imagine if you have a person jumping off a plane without a parachute because he is convinced that he has “moved beyond gravity.” If works for a little while, until it suddenly doesn’t. That sounds too crazy to be true until you realize that this is what the entire Western world is doing right now when we pretend that we have “moved beyond ethnic divisions.” It is hardwired into the human brain to look after your people and “tribe” first. The only ones who are not currently doing this are whites. If, or rather when, white Westerners start behaving like everybody else our countries will quickly become Balkanized nightmares of competing tribes.

We must switch from a “save the world” to a “save ourselves” mode. In the early twentieth century, people of European origins made up one third of the global population, maybe as much as 40%. In the not-too-distant future this figure will be down to less than 10% and falling. This sharp reduction has not been caused by a plague but by a massive population increase in Third World countries, ironically facilitated by the global technological civilization created by European advances. We have given alien peoples the technological ability to multiply, move to our countries and colonize us. This cannot be allowed to continue.

We must start looking after our own interests just like everybody else. Self-preservation is a natural instinct for all living things down to plants and bacteria. The first thing we must do is to bury the entire notion of “racism,” which is anti-scientific nonsense exclusively designed to intimidate whites. It is perfectly conceivable, indeed highly likely, that there is a major genetic component to culture. This would imply that the preservation of the European cultural heritage can only be accomplished through the preservation of our genetic heritage.

It is becoming more or less mandatory for teachers in many Western countries to disparage European peoples, their culture and their heritage. We don’t need to have special reeducation camps because the media and the education system ensure that our society is virtually one large reeducation camp. Unfortunately, that’s not much of an exaggeration. In Hollywood films such as the disaster movie 2012, which I had the misfortune of seeing, all whites are portrayed either as evil and selfish or as losers whereas the non-white characters are portrayed as selfless and heroic. In reality, whites are today among the most selfless and least ethnocentric groups on the planet, and we are being punished heavily for this trait.

The truth is that whites create superior societies. Not only are others not capable of creating what we do, most of them are not even capable of maintaining it. The one major exception would be Northeast Asians, the only other large group of people on this planet apart from Europeans capable of sustaining a technologically sophisticated society. If anybody replaces us as the world’s leading civilization it will be them, for the simple reason that they are the only ones who possess a genetic intelligence to match ours, and they are not suicidal.

Because we create attractive societies other peoples want to move to our countries, but in displacing us they will gradually destroy what made our countries desirable places to live in the first place. They both hate and secretly envy us, and our children suffer needlessly from the violence and verbal abuse caused by this. If whites put up a colony on the planet Mars, I am sure others would hitchhike there on our space ships and demand that we let them in. Once there they would not exhibit any trace of gratitude. On the contrary, they would constantly whine and complain about how evil and racist and oppressive the white man is.

Muslims would demand respect because we owe all our scientific and technological advances to medieval Muslim scholars and because the Martian colony is the 63rd holiest place in Islam. In case you thought the latter sentence was intended as a joke, think again. In 1997 three Arab Muslim gentlemen from the Yemen sued NASA for trespassing on Mars, which they claimed that they owned because they inherited the planet from their ancestors 3,000 years ago.

Novelist Virginia Woolf famously wrote that women need “a room of their own.” In the twenty-first century it is whites who need a room of our own, and if we cannot have that in Europe, which is our cradle, then I don’t see where else we can have it. The alternative is that we maintain a continuing cycle where whites create dynamic societies that are overrun by people incapable of sustaining them. This cycle will finally end when the existence of white communities itself ends. The only viable long-term solution to this dilemma is physical separation. If you force very different peoples to share the same geographic space, conflict is inevitable. This insight was once considered common sense. Now it’s “hate speech.”

Will such a policy not be denounced as “hate” and “Fascism”? Possibly, but I don’t see why we should care about that. We, too, have a right to shape our destiny. Besides, we could always use the arguments of our critics against them. If whites truly are uniquely evil and oppressive, as some people seem to think, is it then not an act of mercy to keep non-whites away from us? That way they don’t have to become exposed to our racism, our hatred and our Islamophobia, but can retain their diverse, authentic and colorful tribal violence undisturbed.

One change that could conceivably take place is that people of European origins develop a stronger identity as “whites” on top of their national identities. I tried to explain to a hostile and now luckily discredited American blogger a while ago that the term “white nationalist” is meaningless in a European context. Maybe it carries some meaning in North America or Australia where most whites are of a mixed heritage, but over here it does not. Englishmen and Germans look fairly similar, but that hasn’t prevented them from slaughtering each other by the millions. Ditto for the French and the Spanish, the Poles and the Russians etc.

I don’t know if there ever will be a “white” identity. Perhaps we are just too different. What I do know is that if such an identity ever comes into being it will to a large extent have been created and forced upon us by our enemies. I have watched a number of disturbing videos, filmed by the attackers, of gangs of blacks or Arabs attacking what appears to be completely random whites. This happens from Sweden via Germany, Britain and France to the United States. This escalating wave of anti-white violence is one of the least-reported major news stories today as Western mainstream media almost uniformly try to cover these things up.

What strikes my about these attacks is that they are based on skin color; nobody asks the victims whether they are Russian Orthodox, Polish Catholics, English atheists, German Lutherans or Dutch Calvinists. These distinctions matter a great deal to us — we have fought many bloody wars because of them — yet they do not seem to matter to those who hate us. If people feel that they are attacked as whites they may start defending themselves as such, too.

The coming pan-Western crash will at the very least lead to an ideological-political paradigm shift and the rise of a new mythology to replace the post-WWII “suicide paradigm” of misunderstood anti-Nazism. At worst, the discontinuity will be so long and severe that what emerges on the other side will be a completely new civilization, the third generation of European civilization, just like what emerged during the Middle Ages was a different civilization from that of Greco-Roman Antiquity. The transition between the first and second generations of European civilization took centuries. History generally moves faster now than it did back then, but I suspect such a transition will nevertheless take several generations.

How a new civilization would look like I do not know. Medieval Europeans used different elements of the Greco-Roman legacy creatively and added new innovations on top of this. Generation Two of European civilization contained within itself aspects of Generation One, but also contained elements of sharp discontinuity. This will probably be the case next time, too.

All of this does admittedly sound a bit gloomy, yet I truthfully remain convinced that we have the necessary cultural and genetic resources to regroup and regenerate at some point, although it is conceivable that whites will in the future come from fewer bloodlines than we do today.